"The Luxurious Daughters of Artificial Life": Female "Delicacy" and Pain in Late-Victorian Advice Literature

The second half of the 19th century marked the rise of obstetrics as a legitimate physician-dominated medical specialty. In this period of transition, distanced from traditional cultures of social childbirth but not yet embracing hospital deliveries, many middle-class North American women turned to prescriptive literature to fill a crucial gap. In the medical advice they directed at young wives and expectant mothers, physicians consistently emphasized the middle-class woman's heightened sensitivity to the pain of giving birth, relying on arguments that resonated with the class, gender, and racial tensions of the late-Victorian period while consistently reaffirming physicians' expanding authority.